What Marketing Job Matches Your Personality?

Matching your personality type with the right marketing job doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll “never work a day in your life,” but it can help create a more rewarding professional path.

Using the highly popular Myers-Briggs personality test and four of the most common categories of marketing job types, we’re going to examine which kinds of marketing work best match up to each distinct personality trait.

Four Types of Digital Marketing Jobs and Four Personality Traits

All personality types can find success in any of the job roles, but each role naturally rewards certain personality traits over others. And of course most real positions will involve doing work pulled from more than one of these categories, just as people are made up of a combination of all four personality types.

So, with a little help from the Myers & Briggs Foundation, let’s explore how well personality preferences in four key areas align with each marketing job type.

In case it’s been a while since you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs test, here are the four primary personality distinctions that this test identifies:

Extroverted vs Introverted: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world (Extroverted) or on your own inner world (Introverted)?

Sensing vs Intuitive: Do you pay more attention to information that comes in through your five senses (Sensing), or do you pay more attention to the patterns and possibilities that you see in the information you receive (Intuition)?

Thinking vs Feeling: Do you like to put more weight on objective principles and impersonal facts (Thinking), or do you put more weight on personal concerns and the people involved (Feeling)?

Judging vs Perceiving: Do you prefer a more structured and decided lifestyle (Judging) or a more flexible and adaptable lifestyle (Perceiving)?

Now it’s time to match each of these up with our core marketing jobs.

Let’s start with the first marketing job type:

Content Writer:

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” Seth Godin

Content marketers love to write, and that doesn’t just mean that they like to use a lot of fancy words.

In the context of marketing, content is about informing readers, a.k.a. potential buyers, in a way that allows them to easily digest the content so that they feel comfortable and intelligent about their buying decision.

Decisive editorial skills and an instinctual sense for how the reader will most efficiently consume the content is key. A quick-moving intuitive mind, versus a more plodding sensing mind is a better fit.

Personality traits:

Equal parts Extroverted to Introverted – Writers, of course, can often thrive in solitude, but here at Marketergizmo, central to our writing process are group content meetings where peer feedback is given. This exchange often results in crucial edits that make our content more relevant and easy-to-digest.

More INTUITIVE than Sensing – Content marketing strategy requires the creation of consistent and timely content, so intuitive minds that do not require extra time to reach conclusions can create content on the fly and may be a better fit.

Equal parts Thinking to Feeling – When making decisions content marketers need to consider hard facts, such as keyword volume, so that their content is relevant. However, at the end of the day they’re storytellers for their product. If they can’t achieve a meaningful connection with their reader, then their content won’t be unique from the rest.

More PERCEIVING than Judging – In certain situations content that provides a decisive opinion can be effective, but most readers appreciate the opportunity to make their owns decisions. A perceiving mind values the constant collection of new evidence and information, and is not quick to finalize a verdict.

Social Media Marketer:

“The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army.” – Jay Baer

The people who excel in these marketing jobs tend to be social butterflies who find establishing meaningful connections to a whole lot of people very fulfilling.

Social media strategy is about developing relationship of reciprocity between the company and it’s potential consumers, meaning extroverts who have a strong reliance on feelings can do well in these positions.

The more that someone is interested in cultivating an online community around their product the better fit that this person is.

Personality traits:

More EXTROVERTED than Introverted – Gaining Twitter followers and Facebook likes requires A LOT of social interaction. Someone who gains energy and inspiration while making these many connections is well suited to social media-centered jobs.

More INTUITIVE than Sensing – The social media world is fast moving. An intuitive mind that can easily key into the global “chatter” can be a more harmonious fit here than someone who needs to crunch numbers before every tweet.

More FEELING than Thinking – Although information is certainly exchanged over social media, one of its main marketing goals is to create a sense of community around a product. Those marketers who make decisions with people as their primary concern, versus those who prefer to utilize facts and principles, are more commonly found here.

More PERCEIVING than Judging – Social media is a global ongoing conversation. When it comes to marketing it’s definitely better to listen to the opinion of others and further the conversation then it is to draw lines in the sand.

Market Researcher:

“Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.” Dan Zarrella

Market Researchers gather information about what people think so that insights can be extracted from the data to guide sales, marketing, product development, and beyond.

These marketers think that marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed, and they live by the motto “numbers don’t lie.”

Those with the requisite eye for detail and patience to look hard within data-sets to draw meaningful conclusions are a good fit for these research-driven positions.

Personality traits:

Equal parts Extroverted to Introverted – They spend much of their time analyzing data, but synthesizing and presenting data to others are also central to their tasks.More SENSING than Intuitive – The cold, hard facts are what matter here. Pragmatists who focus on the bottom line are a more natural fit than those who are more inclined to “read between the lines.”More THINKING than Feeling – In the realm of market research effective decisions are typically made impersonally using logical explanations and the analysis of pros vs. cons. Those who enjoy relying on subjective data do well in these marketing jobs.More JUDGING than Perceiving – As opposed to any spontaneous tendencies, market research personality types commonly have a planned or orderly way of life, like to have things settled and organized, and like to bring life under control as much as possible.

Marketing Designer:

“Creative without strategy is called art, creative with strategy is called advertising.” – Jef Richards

“Artsy” marketing jobs involve creatively and beautifully showing the value of your product or service. This skill set carries over into many types of marketing positions, including web designers and content marketers, but those who have an artistic soul gravitate toward highly design-driven positions.

Everything presented to the customer, whether it’s a website, a product newsletter, or any promotional materials, need to be created by artistic marketers who are willing to spend the bulk of their time alone.

Personality traits:

Equal parts Extroverted to Introverted – Artsy marketers can fall into either category, but they must excel at designing and editing while spending many hours by themselves. They also need the ability to incorporate external feedback and speak well about their designs to get far in corporate environments.More INTUITIVE than Sensing – They trust elements that are important in artwork, such as impressions, symbols, and metaphors, more than a pragmatic use of facts and numbers. In the world of marketing, however, they must occasionally bow to more objective input like eye tracking studies or user tests.More THINKING than Feeling – Strong creativity needs to be balanced with a detailed eye for good design, which requires devotion to certain logic and principles.Equal parts Judging to Perceiving – There is a value here in staying open to new information or ways of thinking while expressing more finalized viewpoints. Successful artsy marketers achieve this balance.

Bret enjoys creating content that’s inspired by the current challenges facing marketers. He also has years of experience assisting clients with their market research studies so that they capture truly actionable feedback.
When he’s not helping you find the perfect audience for your upcoming study, he’s searching the Colorado foothills for a new trail to run and plays ski bum on the weekends hitting the high country to shred the fresh gnar gnar (bro).

MarketerGizmo’s goal is to provide marketing tools and information that allow marketers to become more agile, increase their marketing intelligence, and empower them to excel professionally. Find out more about us.